This chapter is from the book

Google+ is the fastest-growing social media platform in history. Every day, more than 600,000 people sign up. It is designed to help you make connections and to share information. With Google+, you can meet people with common personal or professional interests, learn about everything from photography to computer programming, and expand your nonprofit’s marketing and donor relations. You can post pictures, links to your website, and announcements from your organization. You can use the mobile app to keep up with Google+ communications while away from your computer. You can set up a personal profile and a page for your charity.

Google+ is a lot like Facebook. It is also a lot like Twitter. On Facebook, you need to get the others’ permission before you connect to them. Google+ is more like Twitter in that you can follow anyone you please. This means your donors can share your posts with many more people on Google+ than on Facebook. And Google+ has a much cleaner interface than Facebook. (That is one reason people are dumping Facebook in favor of Google+.)

Google+ also has a lot of its own features. Instead of being limited to 140 characters like Twitter or 400ish like Facebook, you can make posts as long as you want in Google+. Using simple symbols such as asterisks (*) and underscores (_), you can make your posts easier to read, and you can add formatting, such as bold and italic. It also has some of the best videoconferencing software in existence in its tool called Hangouts.

In this chapter, you’ll learn why Google+ is the most important online tool next to your website and how to convince your boss or board.

Why Should I Care?

When you first heard about Google’s latest attempt at a social network, you probably thought one of two things: “What, again?” (Remember its previous attempts with Wave and Buzz?) or “Really?! How in the world am I going to fit anything else into my schedule?”

Chances are good you thought both of these.

Let’s face the facts: You already have a full-time job without social media. You have staff who need supervision and a board that supervises you. You have the mission of your nonprofit to carry out. And you have donors you’re supposed to be meeting with. Who has time for yet another social media platform?

Normally, I would agree with you. Social media platforms come and go at a dizzying pace. One of the nice things about being in a nonprofit is that we do not have to be bleeding edge to be cutting edge. We do not have to be up to date with the latest fad. We can let businesses and other people test them out before actually engaging in them ourselves.

But this is Google, and Google seems to have learned from its mistakes.

Look at it this way: If a donor were giving 50% of your annual fundraising, you would probably be more inclined to listen to any suggestions from that donor. If you check your Analytics, you likely would find that Google sends at least 50% of your web traffic to your site. So, isn’t it in your best interest to at least look into what it is doing?